Girls' Day--really?

I wasn’t surprised the first time I heard someone say “Happy Women’s Day” a week ago Friday, and I wasn’t too surprised when my very charming language teacher laughed and told a small group of Koreans, Japanese, Russians, a few Americans, and a Frenchman that, in so many words, Women’s Day was the official holiday but the unofficial holiday was “Girl’s Day.” In fact, I wasn’t surprised at all. For a semester, I’d heard college students calling themselves “girls” and had witnessed little animal ears on various hats and cell phone covers.  Other things seemed “girl-ish” indeed, even though being girl-ish one minute didn’t preclude walking arm-in-arm in tight mini-skirts and stiletto heels the next. But what I had naively failed to realize was that International Women’s Day is a bona fide stay-home-from-work holiday, not only in China but in many countries—and had been an official holiday in China since the founding of the PCR in 1949. That was roughly a generation before the UN proclaimed Women’s Day for women’s rights and world peace in 1977.

 But many of the students at my college and elsewhere have been actively plotting an alternative celebration, “Girl’s Day,” something more akin to Valentine’s Day than any sort of politically grounded event. One of my students wrote to tell me that the Student Union of the School of Computer Science had announced a set of “rules” for Girl’s day. He wrote that “on the girls' day, a boy on a bicycle should take the girl who is walking beside, boys shouldn’t reject a dinner treat request from girls, boys are not allowed to retort girls even if they quarrel, boys should allow girls jumping queues, a boy shouldn’t refuse the love if a girl confess love to the boy.”  Chivalry is not dead!

  

I think I hear Susan B. Anthony groaning.

I look at those shoes and think about bound feet—what are they thinking? Who are they pleasing?

Strangely, I’ve begun to see these most a-political of acts—dressing in the most provocative and anti-feminist ways—as almost political. Not political, but rather  willful resistance to botched deliveries of the political. Thinking this way helps me understand both my Chinese students and my students at home, who also tend to be relatively a-political.   Watching Zhang’s 1994 film To Live last night led me to reflect once again on what it takes to live in a world where political movements with good intentions can go—and have gone—tragically awry. What does it mean to live anywhere—whatever the internal and external conditions are? 

The historical meaning of Women’s Day, I’m sure, is not lost on my students. And they do have a sense of irony. They, both men and women, could laugh heartily when reading “The Good Wife’s Guide,” an article (dubiously) attributed to a 1950s issue of Good Housekeeping:
*Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, and on time, for his return. This is a way of letting him know you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed. . . .
* Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.
* Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgement, or integrity. Remember he is the master of the house, and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.
* A good wife always knows her place.

 I’m reminded, too, that translation continues to be a devilish problem. So, what is a woman? 女人  女子  妇女   妇女  妇 And what is a girl? 女孩   姑娘  的女孩  女 的姑娘  Not so easy. Is it my notion of “woman” the same thing that Chinese “girls” are resisting when they seek an alternative holiday celebrating young, pretty, unmarried women under thirty? Whew. Sometimes it’s amazing that we can communicate at all.

 

 

--> But, even if it’s true that, paradoxically, (political) resistance to botched political activity may be expressed in pointedly a-political ways, I don’t see all bygone political activity as botched and I hope that some day my students (Chinese, American, whatever) may appreciate more fully the founding of the International Women’s Day.